The Fae
by Harlow Jacobs
Summary: Soon after moving back to her sleepy New England town, a young woman discovers a family secret and embarks on a journey with her fairy godmother to fulfill her true destiny.


The rain fell gently against the roof of the old Victorian home where Rose Matthews was sleeping. A hot breeze had let itself in causing the long white rectangular blinds covering the window to shimmy violently and bump into one another. Rose awoke gasping for air, quickly opening her eyes to escape the nightmare she had been having. The nightmare always started the same way but would end differently each time. She was on a crowded busy subway train. The faces of the people riding it along with her were blurry and difficult to make out. All except one.

A woman with spaghetti thin black hair sat in front of her. The woman turned slowly by first resting her bony, elongated fingers on the front of Roses seat. The hand on her skin was a yellowish gray and looked like it had been decaying. Rose was immediately startled and scanned the face of the woman. It was a face nobody could ever forget. The woman's forehead was partially covered by stringy hairy strands and her whole face curved into a very thin V shape. Almond shaped eyes looked deeply into Rose, their color a putrid yellow with white pupils. Her nose was thin, pointy and red like someone who had spent too many years of drinking. The top lip of the creature was bigger than the bottom one as if she was pursing her lips together in anger. However, no expression nor emotion was readable to Rose. Uneasy, Rose got up from her seat intuitively knowing the woman wanted her to get off at this stop. Her stomach sank with fear knowing that whatever stop she was going to get off at would hold nothing pleasant.

She inhaled deeply, feeling grateful she had woken up before she could see what was next to come in her nightmare. She felt a sharp pain in her heart suddenly recalling the knowledge that she was alone and three thousand miles away from her old life. Paralyzed with fear by the pitch blackness, She desperately wanted to escape from the image of the womans face. She tried to survey the room but her eyes hadn't fully adjusted yet. A strong smell of black licorice enveloped her nostrils and for some reason she felt that she was not alone. The air was humid and enveloped her body like a thick blanket. It was a rainy dark night and the perfect atmosphere for ones imagination to run off. Was there someone in the closet waiting for their opportunity to strike? Maybe something was at the foot of the bed hungry for flesh? Her mind ran wild and her stomach flip flopped at the possibilities of just what could go wrong. Resting her hand on the pocket knife tucked under the mattress, she lay completely still listening for any suspicious noises. Only the sound of falling rain could be heard. Just having moved back from the bustling city of Los Angeles to her sleepy New England town, she wasn't sure if the silence was more eerie than any noises the city could produce.

After a few minutes without any type of alarming noise, her eyes adjusted to the darkness and her breathing became normal again. Beads of sweat on her arms glistened a strange blue taking on the same color of the moonlight shining in from the window. The wooden closet door which once comforting streaks of light peeked out of was now the enemy and stared back like a wide black gaping hole. How immature and silly she thought. She told herself she was too old to be afraid of the dark and to get it together. It wasn't her fault, the nightmares had been coming more and more frequently. Someone had to have entered her room to shut off the closet light. She hated when her mother would check on her and in turn wake her up. Reasoning with herself, her muscles slowly relaxed but something else weighed more heavy than the fear of the darkness. Her heart sank with sadness and despair remembering where she was compared to where she had been. She wondered when she'd stop expecting for there to be a warm body next to her. How the hell did I end up back to where I started?" she thought.

It wasn't that she disliked her small town outside of Boston. It was the fact that moving back in with your parents defeated by the big bad world was just about as humiliating as it gets. She felt that she didn't belong here anymore as an adult. The stark realization hit her that maybe she didn't belong anywhere. While memories of trips to Maine, apple picking, sledding and ice fishing filled her childhood with happiness it was balanced with the fact she never graduated from college and made a string of shitty decisions accompanied by just as awful relationships.

Life was as mediocre and average as the next person in their mid twenties. Balancing nights of binge drinking and keeping your entry level desk position was all that mattered. Confusion had been plaguing her brain more than ever now and she hadn't even had a drink in weeks since the breakup. She thought of her old high school friends working the bar and wished she could go for a quick drink. Immediately her intuition screamed "NO! you are trying to change." yet she imagined the sound of the ice cubes clinking in a tall glass filled with vodka and cranberry. She thought of the way the first sip taste on her tongue, refreshing and tart. "You are trying to be productive, stay strong."

Rose had no intention of staying in her small town for long. She knew she needed mental clarity and focus to get back to California. That was proving to be difficult lately and her head felt foggy. She had to go back to Los Angeles and prove herself. Time passed too quickly and it seemed like yesterday she was leaving in her last semester of college, to she make the journey to meet with an agent for acting. And what happened? Absolutely nothing. The agent turned out to be a scumbag offering her a role in exchange for sexual favors. She was devastated realizing the casting couch is still very much alive and well. An endless string of hangovers and failed attempts at taking the nearby casino for all its got was all that followed.

Unbeknownst to Rose life would be changing drastically. All the little heartbreaks and seemingly small problems that made up her world all happened for a reason. The cosmos had a bigger fate in store for her and tomorrow she was about to meet Sylvie Foulger, her fairy godmother.


End file.
